Distro Reviews

zmaint

WetGeek Yeah I love Signal and that it's in the repo.

jppelt

Dang - Josh is adding Budgie to Fedora:

brent

@tomscharbach burned zephix .iso a couple different ways but same thing happens: zephix splash screen, press any mode, boots into TTY. So this distro can't be installed or experienced in any way on my end. Your thoughts?
This is the opposite of important🙂

tomscharbach

brent ... same thing happens: zephix splash screen, press any mode, boots into TTY.

I think that this is what is supposed to happen. At least that is what happened in my case. Zephix initially started in the terminal, and then using the terminal, I copied desktop.zx and firefox/zx into the /Zephix/modules/ directory. On the next boot, Zeiphix opened into the desktop and Firefox was available.

Not the simplest way to skin a cat, but it worked in my case, and I think that is how it is supposed to work -- initial boot into the terminal, copy modules into the /Zephix/modules/ directory, then reboot. I haven't done a lot of work using Zephix, but once made, the added modules have been persistent.

I have yet to succeed building a Edge module. The instructions on the website are somewhat less than illuminating. It wouldn't hurt the developer to post a short tutorial. The Zephix website is long on design and short on information.

zmaint

Is budgie still being built with gnome, or are they planning on moving away still?

murbert

zmaint Currently built with Gnome, I believe the plan is to switch over for Budgie 11

brent

tomscharbach
Thank you. All clear except one thing. Copy the .zx files from where?? Install mode is technically in bios, right? There is no place these files could exist that the installer could find is there? Graci--

tomscharbach

A quick report on Ubuntu Budgie 22.04:

I committed myself to testing Beta and RC and have spent several weeks immersed in the distro, using it constantly, probably at least 100 hours since Beta was released.

I think that Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS is ready for release on Thursday, although, prudently, UB plans a point release at the end of July to clear out any remaining bugs.

Ubuntu clearly thinks that the Ubuntu side is ready; Ubuntu released a smattering of updates over the weekend, but yesterday the updates were focused on adding migration tools from 20.04 LTS rather than the Ubuntu base itself. The Budgie side has not changed for a week other than to update apps to current. I look forward to installing the final LTS release on Friday or Saturday.

The UB team has done a great job of implementing Budgie 10.6.1, and it is both attractive and as smooth as silk. I know from reading the BuddiesOfBudgie blog that David Mohammed, UB's lead, contributed to Budgie 10.6, which is what Josh envisioned last January -- a collective and collaborative effort between the project and downstream Budgie implementations.

That is not to say that UB is perfect. Firefox, for example, is UB's default browser but implemented as a snap. Firefox works fine after it opens, but because it is a snap, it takes longer to open than it should. Elements of the UB environment -- Budgie Welcome, for example -- are also implemented as snaps. Ubuntu seems to be moving in the direction of forcing snaps as the default installation, though, so I expect Ubuntu-based distributions to be more and more snap-based over time. I had issues with Gnome Boxes, and I have yet to install Steam (I decided to wait until I could do so on stable), but I don't expect issues with Steam because UB has a gaming module that is dedicated to Steam, Lutris and so on.

Budgie Welcome is, well, a welcome addition, nicely done.

Budgie Welcome is a control panel to allow users to set up UB without pouring through menus. The "Getting Started" tab includes a "Browser Ballot", which allows users to choose between 10 browsers (Brave, Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, Firefox EST, Edge, Gnome Web, Midori, Opera, Vivaldi), some as snaps, some as native, and some the user's choice between snap and native. I've seen welcome screens before (mostly feature walk-throughs), but none as well organized and functional as the Budgie Welcome app that the UB team implemented.

UB is built on Ubuntu, obviously, with all that entails. The kernel is 5.15.0-25-generic, the Gnome stack is 41.4 (maybe migrating to 42 at this summer's point release, depending on what Ubuntu does), and the default themes are Pocillo/Pocillo-dark.

I've looked at a number of non-Solus Budgie implementations in recent months. UB is the only one I've seen that I would consider as a Solus Budgie alternative, and the only non-Solus Budgie build I would recommend to anyone at this point.

If any of you are interested in looking at it, I'd wait until next week after the LTS has been released and in circulation for a few days. I think that, after looking at other Budgie implementations, you'll be surprised, as I was, about how well the UB team has implemented Budgie on a Ubuntu base.

WetGeek

tomscharbach you'll be surprised, as I was, about how well the UB team has implemented Budgie on a Ubuntu base.

Definitely looking forward to seeing what they've been able to do. One question: It's been almost universal among the Budgie implementations that I've seen lately, that the "System Settings" link below the "Budgie Desktop Settings" link in the context menu has done nothing at all. It's as if that click event simply has no handler. That seems like asignificant omission, and I've seen it almost verywhere. What is Ubuntu doing with that?

Every distro makes system settings available, so why not launch them from that link? It's more convenient than looking through a menu for them.

tomscharbach

WetGeek It's been almost universal among the Budgie implementations that I've seen lately, that the "System Settings" link below the "Budgie Desktop Settings" link in the context menu has done nothing at all. It's as if that click event simply has no handler.

In UB, the two menus are "Budgie Desktop Settings" and "Budgie Control Center" (which is what was the "Settings Menu" in older versions). The Budgie Control Center (left window in the screenshot), as far as I can tell, is a fully functional system settings menu.

My guess is that the other implementations with a non-functional "System Settings" menu are defective, maybe listing "System Settings" as a non-functional artifact.

Edit/Update: I think I see what you are talking about. Solus Budgie has a "Systems Setting" entry in the main menu that has nothing at all to do with system settings, which are contained in the Budgie Control Center. Instead, Solus Systems Settings opens Hardware Drivers and the Software Center. Silly and clearly an artifact, keeping a main menu item and populating it with fillers. UB eliminates the "System Settings" menu item entirely.

Staudey

tomscharbach I think I see what you are talking about. Solus Budgie has a "Systems Setting" entry in the main menu that has nothing at all to do with system settings, which are contained in the Budgie Control Center.

I actually think that @WetGeek was talking about the right-click menu that appears on the desktop, which contains two entries, "Budgie Desktop Settings" and "System Settings". The latter of which should open "Budgie Control Center" now.
Good point about the categories in any case. It's a bit weird that those two entries are in "System Settings", while "Budgie Control Center" itself appears in "Other"

tomscharbach

brent Copy the .zx files from where??

What I think I did was install Zephix in terminal mode. I dpwnloaded the zx module files to my computer earlier, and put them on a FAT 32 "transfer" USB. After I booted Zephix, I copied the files from the USB the Zephix USB using the terminal. But I mostly remember fumbling around with it until I managed it, so I'm not sure.

brent

tomscharbach brain fart. these things are live so of course there is drive access. even the zephix usb I ran in the terminal. basciallysudo cp /dev/sdc1/brent/downloads/firefox.zx to where(target drive)? Yes, I will play around with it. I know I'm complicating this🙂
thanks for responding

tomscharbach

Staudey I actually think that @WetGeek was talking about the right-click menu that appears on the desktop, which contains two entries, "Budgie Desktop Settings" and "System Settings". The latter of which should open "Budgie Control Center" now.

Yup. It should. And whatever it does, it should work.

UB's right-click desktop menu doesn't include a "Systems Settings" menu item. UB has only "Desktop Settings" which opens the "Budgie Desktop Settings" menu.

tomscharbach

Staudey Good point about the categories in any case. It's a bit weird that those two entries are in "System Settings", while "Budgie Control Center" itself appears in "Other"

Solus Budgie's menu organization is nothing to write home about, and UB isn't any better -- for example, "Budgie Themes and Layout" is in "Accessories", "Budgie Control Center" is in "Preferences", and "Budgie Desktop Settings" is in "System Tools". Go figure the logic of that.

I sometimes think that menu designers are drunk 90% of the time.

I try to avoid the whole circus. Everything I use regularly is in my bottom bar, in both Budgie and Windows, and the only part of the Budgie main menu I use is "All", an alphabetical listing of everything available similar to the Windows "All apps" menu. I'm really not interested in playing "hunt and peck" inside somebody else's brain, and that's what poking around in menus comes down to most of the time.

WetGeek

During my younger and stupider distro-hopping years, I had used Linux Mint for some time, and was generally impressed with it. It's listed as a Linux distro that supports Budgie, so it was one of the distros I wanted to check out with a VM.

I'm no longer impressed. I downloaded 20.3 with Cinnamon, as they don't provide an .ISO file with Budgie. The installer is clean and straightforward, but takes forever to install Mint. I'm pretty sure I could have installed all four Solus flavors in the time their installer took to install Mint Cinnamon.

Their Budgie implementation places the bottom panel at the top of the screen, and with a reasonable amount of searching, I couldn't find a way to move it to the bottom. And there was no 1920x1080, or any other 16:9 resolution available for the display! I thought that was amazing, given the popularity of "full HD" monitors these days.

So I've removed the Mint VM from VirtualBox and taken it off my list of Budgie installations to explore.

WetGeek

Without double-checking, I'm pretty sure that Void Linux is the last "Best Budgie Distro" on my list to explore, so I created a Void VM.

As some of you may already know, this is a different (to be kind) Linux distro than we're used to. For one thing, there's no installer that I could find. Apparently running the .ISO file does the installation. That makes sense if there's no "live" feature, I guess, but I spent some time looking for an Install OS link.

I'm "anon," apparently, and I couldn't find a way to change that. I could also find no way to install software, so I'm confused about the claim that Void supports Budgie. Has anyone here used Void Linux before? Am I missing something obvious, or is this simply designed to be a zero-frills distro?

WetGeek

WetGeek Am I missing something obvious, or is this simply designed to be a zero-frills distro?

Ah, I finally rembered why the Void .ISO file was already in my ISOs share - I'd actually tried to install it earlier. I gave up when I got to the part of the installer that uses cfdisk or fdisk to create all the minute details of the partitions needed for Void.

I understand that -- in the tradition of Arch -- some folks like to prepare their disks before installing, however I can't understand NOT offering a standard option as an alternative, like Solus (and most other distros I've tried) provides.

They could at least offer an option to use gparted, or equvalent, to make it easier to see what we're doing. So, I'm not a fan, and my Void VM is now gone. I hope I can remember it this time!

brent

Hat tip to @kyrios who furnished, in another thread, a list of GNU Linux totally free** (no 3rd party at all) distros.
After research I really liked GUIX (pronounced geeks). It has some unique features and I liked the idea of it. Why the idea?
Part 1: fourteen hour install (ugh) just ended.

Part 2: some other time🙂

**GNU website says that "These distros are ready-to-use full systems whose developers have made a commitment to follow the Free System Distribution Guidelines. This means they will include, and propose, exclusively free software. They will reject nonfree applications, nonfree programming platforms, nonfree drivers, nonfree firmware “blobs,” nonfree games, and any other nonfree software, as well as nonfree manuals or documentation."

I like a challenge.

WetGeek

@tomscharbach , I have some questions for you in your capacity as our resident DELL expert. They're off-topic here, of course, but I hope to be forgiven -- I don't know where else to put 'em.

Over the weekend Bluetooth on my Precision 4800 stopped working, although wi-fi has never been an issue. Not knowing what else to blame, I replaced the radio, but it didn't help. Still wi-fi is good, but no Bluetooth.

I'd bought this laptop as refurbished, and had it a few years, so there's no question of a warranty. But I've certainly gotten more than my money's worth of good use out of it, so I'm not beside myself with remorse. It's just that Bluetooth is very important to me - both my mouse and keyboard are multi-device Bluetooth versions.

So before I give up on this computer I figured I'd ask you whether there's something else I should check. The wi-fi switch on the side causes the wi-fi led on the keyboard to glow, but not the Bluetooth one. I've double-checked that the bios assures me that Bluetooth is controlled by that same switch. Anything else to check?

One last question: I now have two new radios for the 4800 - I bought one a while ago to accommodate these Bluetooth peripherals, because the original was one generation too old. So now I have two new radios. If I should get a Latitude next, instead of a Precision, will those likely fit it? (I really like my wife's Latitude.)

tomscharbach

WetGeek So before I give up on this computer I figured I'd ask you whether there's something else I should check. The wi-fi switch on the side causes the wi-fi led on the keyboard to glow, but not the Bluetooth one. I've double-checked that the bios assures me that Bluetooth is controlled by that same switch. Anything else to check?

I suppose you could check the internet, but I can't think of anything off hand. I suppose that it could be a driver issue, but because the light is not working, it sounds more like hardware, specifically something not right with the way the radio interacts with the motherboard - a non-working pin on the motherboard socket or something like that. I'm not even sure where I'd start looking to solve it.

Before you toss the computer (Precision workstations are really good hardware), consider buying a Bluetooth USB adapter. My test computer (Dell Optiplex Micro 5070, refurbished and 5-6 years old now) didn't have an internal Bluetooth (business desktops of the era usually didn't), so I bought a TP-Link UB400 nano adapter, and it works with Linux. Since you are using Bluetooth to attach to a keyboard/mouse, which doesn't take much "bandwidth", an external USB adapter might do the trick, just as "wireless" keyboards and mice do fine with a nano adapter .

Just something to think about, but if you go that route, be careful to check Linux compatibility very carefully (just as you would with an external wifi adapter) or you'll be tossing your money into the ditch.

WetGeek One last question: I now have two new radios for the 4800 - I bought one a while ago to accommodate these Bluetooth peripherals, because the original was one generation too old. So now I have two new radios. If I should get a Latitude next, instead of a Precision, will those likely fit it? (I really like my wife's Latitude.)

Obviously, I don't know, but Dell tends to use relatively standard components in its business computers, so there's a fair chance that it might work.

Dell has an excellent support site, including an "Owner's Manual" that is detailed, so you might be able to figure it out from the support site if you know the model you are considering.

Here's how to get at the "Owners Manual", using a Dell Precision M4800 as an example. Go to the Dell website (dell.com), hover over the "Support" tab to open the drop down menu, and click "Support Home". On the page that shows up, put the model (e.g. "Precision M4800" into the "Identify your product" box, and a support page for that model will open:

Click on "Documentation", and on the page that opens, scroll down to "Manuals and Documents" and you'll find the Owner's manual for the computer (in this case the "Dell Precision Mobile Workstation M4800 Owner's Manual"). The file is available either in pdf or html, and will give you a lot of information about the computer, including tear-down instructions and detailed specifications. I'm thinking that the tear-down instructions might be helpful because you'll likely see photos of the adapter and dock.

If you do that for your Precision and a Latitude (or any other Dell) you are thinking about, comparing the two Owner's manuals should give you a good idea about whether or not your owned radios can be swapped into the new computer or not.

Good luck with it.

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